Doing Business, Part 67 [Season 4 Premier] (Patreon)

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Sixty-Seven

It was as if a fog had been lifted. A fog that I wasn't even aware of until I saw it receding.

And so if I looked a little a little out of it—if I looked kind of confused, or maybe even flustered—it was because it suddenly felt like I was seeing the world around me for the first time. The 'real' world. Not the imagined fantasy land I had been, willingly, plunged into for the last few months.

“Are...you okay?”

Shit. Shit. Shit. What the hell am I doing?

I tried assembling a quick timeline in my mind, trying to retrace the last few months.

Months? Had it been months? That felt right. It had been longer than weeks, but it certainly hadn't been years.

Beyond that, I realized I didn't know all that much about when it was. I didn't know what day of the week it was. I wasn't even completely certain what month it was. I could have taken an estimated guess, though I wouldn't have been surprised if I was wrong.

There had been moments, a ways back, when I had thoughts like this. I'd be lying in my crib, or rolling around on the floor and I'd suddenly think about the rest of the world—still doing their jobs. Going on dates. Buying paperback books from the grocery store. Scrolling through the near-infinite amount of content on streaming platforms as they looked for something to watch. And there I was in a world almost entirely of my own. And Mommy's.

“Uhm...I think I just need a minute...” I said.

That feeling had surfaced less frequently over time, until the point where they just ceased to exist.

Looking at Ava, that feeling was coming back for the first time in a while. Stronger than I could ever remember it being before too.

Mommy was gone, somewhere between the house and the airport. Had I been left in the care of Courtney—as was usually the case—I doubted I'd be having this overwhelming feeling of having squandered my life. It would've been just another day in the life of the baby.

It wasn't just the presence of Ava that was triggering this feeling of my life being squandered. It was who Ava seemed to be, all of a sudden. In my mind, Ava was the same young woman I worked with back at the office. That Ava had an innocent face and a reputation for stinky diapers. That Ava rolled around with me in a quiet park in the middle of the night. That Ava suckled from Ms. Beaufort's chest amidst the crisis that was unfurling in the office.

This was not that Ava. Her hair was longer. She was wearing more makeup than I could ever remember her wearing before. Even her body language seemed a little different. Was she standing straighter? Was that confidence in her poise?

“What are you doing here?” I asked, at last.

“I got a call,” she said. “Well...it started with a call. Gabrielle and I met for lunch after that.”

“Y-you...met up with her?” I did not know about this. I hadn't realized that Mommy had contact with Ava at all. I certainly hadn't talked to Ava in... Well, it had been a very long time.

“And you wanted to, uh, babysit me?”

“No,” she said, laughing. “I just wanted to see you.”

“But...”

“Clark, do you actually need a babysitter?”

“Uh...”

My diaper was wet. Soaking, actually. Worse, I woke up like this, with the accident occurring while I was fast asleep. Was I that much different than an actual infant? So, yeah. Maybe I did need a babysitter.

“I missed you, Clark. And it seemed like this was the only way to see you.”

“You could've dropped by at any time,” I shrugged.

“I wanted to see you. I didn’t want to see Ms. Heller’s little plaything.”

“Oh…I…”

“No offense,” she shrugged. “I was a plaything once. And it was quite nice. But I knew I was never going to be able to have a conversation with you–a real conversation–for as long as she was around.”

“N-none taken,” I said. “This isn’t like a, uh, intervention, is it? Because…”

“It’s not an intervention,” she sighed. “I just…needed to see you.”

“W-well,” I said, my voice a little shaky as I leaned back on my knees, starting the slow process of standing up. “Here I am.”

“You look…cute,” she said. It sounded genuine, though she didn’t look entirely happy about that either.

“Mommy dresses me,” I blurted out, barely giving myself a moment to consider how infantile that would sound. I felt my cheeks warming as I finally stood straight up. I felt my diaper shifting, the soggy load between my legs sagging down as far as it could in my onesie.

Sometimes it would dawn on me just how little I stood anymore. I probably looked pretty pathetic even trying–a wobbly toddler in obvious need of a diaper change.

“I’m sure she does,” Ava said, her lips curling into a small smile. “She probably does a lot of things for you, doesn’t she?” I disliked how she seemed to be talking down to me–her tone getting soft and exaggerated like she was trying to have an ‘adult’ conversation with an actual child, all while chuckling at the child’s attempts at trying to match that cadence. I didn’t think she was really laughing at me or even intending to be all that condescending. Perhaps it was just human nature to talk like that when confronted with someone so…small.

“Well…just about everything,” I responded, shrugging.

“Are you happy?”

The question feels big. The question feels like it was something she meant to save for later–something we built up to with a number of other conversations first. A question that would serve as a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter. Instead, here it was–only minutes after she walked through the door.

It was a very easy question to answer, I thought. “Of course.”

“The diapers? Being fed? Being bathed? Crawling around in just this house because you can’t really go anywhere else?”

Was she trying to point out reasons why I shouldn’t like my lifestyle? Because those all sounded like amazing things to me. “I…like all that.”

She nodded. I wondered if she was disappointed by my response–though if she was, she was doing a decent job of hiding it.

A strange feeling had come over me–an almost adult feeling. She wasn’t a babysitter like Courtney or Lyndie were. They’d come over and immediately take charge, reminding me that I was still a little baby–regardless of whether or not my Mommy was around. Ava, on the other hand, wasn’t like them. Sure, maybe she couldn’t help but be a little condescending, but this was already the most ‘mature’ conversation I’d had in months. I was feeling like a host–like I would be responsible for the comfort of a guest in my own home.

“Can I, uh, get you something?” I asked.

She laughed, shaking her head. “Ms. Heller has made it very clear that I can help myself to anything.”

“But…”

“I can take care of myself,” she smirked. “I’m a big girl.”

It’s a playful jab, but one that sticks a little deeper than she probably intended for it to. It took a conscious effort not to just lower myself into my default crawling position again–standing doesn’t feel as natural at the moment.

What do adults talk about?

“So…how have you been?”

She laughed. The vibe I read from her is something like ‘Aww, look, he thinks he’s a big boy!’ But I might’ve been projecting.

“I’ve been good,” she said. “Busy.”

Busy. ‘Busy’ was something I hadn’t experienced in a long time. It was a thing that happened to the people around me–but never me. Mommy was ‘busy.’ Lyndie was ‘busy.’ Courtney always said that she was ‘busy’ when she was over at the house–but she was probably referring to the fact that I kept her busy.

“You, uhm, have a new job?”

“It’s not as new anymore,” she shrugged. “Doing project management at a marketing firm downtown.”

“You like it?”

She nodded. “It’s fulfilling.”

I wanted to pry into that a little. I wanted to know if she just had a passion for project management–whatever that was–or if it was just fulfilling to be doing any job that respected her like an adult, as opposed to being made to wear diapers and suckle on breasts.

I sometimes fantasized about a ‘normal’ life of working 9-to-5 and using a toilet. Not often, but once in a while.

I kept my prying to myself. “Do you, uhm, keep in touch with Ms. Beaufort?”

“Not really,” she said. Her answer seems rather terse to me. A sore spot?

“She comes by once in a while,” I say. “She and Mommy work together, you know?”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

“She has a new assistant now. I’ve only met her once. Uh…Risa, I think?”

“Yes, I know,” she said again.

It dawned on me that I wasn’t reading the room very well. In my defense, I thought, I haven’t had to read the room in a while. This was definitely a sore spot. I wanted to know more, but it was clearly none of my business.

Maybe it was time to change the subject again: “You’re, uhm, keeping in touch with Lyndie, right?”

Ava laughed and nodded. “I live with her, silly.”

I knew that. I thought I knew that–but maybe I just never really processed that before. It was wild to think that two of my closest friends were now living together–in a world completely detached from my own.

“She’s good?”

She nodded. “She’s good. Busy, of course.”

Everyone is. Well, almost everyone.

“Is she still taking care of…”

“Bradley? She is. Not as often as she used to, though. For a while, it felt like he was over at our place every weekend. But he’s actually going to be leaving the city soon.”

“Oh?”

“He was offered a job at wherever it is his father works,” she shrugged. “So, he’s…

No, don’t say it…

“...moving on.”

Exactly what I feared. Even pathetic little Bradley was growing up. And there I was, still waddling around in diapers that I soaked while I slept.

“He’s actually over at our apartment with Lyndie this weekend,” she continued. “This might be the last time he sees Lyndie for a while.”

I wanted to know more. I wanted to know what kind of drama, if any at all, came out of the Bradley-Lyndie-Nancy Tamberlin triangle. I wanted to know how long Bradley and Ms. Tamberlin remained with the old company–or if they were still there now. That got me thinking about a number of people I’ve had no reason to think about for a few months. Mr. Yang. Megan. Mr. Morris. People who were close to the epicenter when the Thomas Pritchard bomb went off.

Thomas Pritchard. What was that guy doing now?

I wanted to change the subject again. Or, maybe, I wanted to loop around back to the very beginning of the conversation.

“You wanted to see me?” I asked.

She nodded. “Is it really that strange that I missed you? We were pretty close for a while there. And then…stuff happened and you just kind of vanished.”

Had it actually been like that? It was hard for me to say. When I thought back at that time–that admittedly short period between when Mommy and I left the country and when I officially moved into her home–I was always under the impression that everyone would just stay in my life. Lyndie or Ms. Beaufort would come over to the house and it’d be like nothing had changed other than the location that I saw them in. And if Ava didn’t come over too, then it was because she just chose not to.

But maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe she had been waiting for an invitation that never came. Maybe I should’ve made any sort of effort to reach out to her–and the fact that I didn’t had been interpreted as me not wanting to.

“Shit. I’m sorry, Ava.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” she said. “I didn’t come over here because I wanted you to apologize. I get it. You were given the opportunity to do something you really wanted to do. And Ms. Heller has obviously been taking very good care of you. Maybe I’d have done the same thing if I were in your diapers.”

“Do you…ever wear diapers now?” I asked. The words felt so pathetic as I said them. Here she was, trying to talk to me like I was still her peer, and I was still mumbling about diapers.

“No,” she said.

“Are you…ever tempted to?”

She shrugged. “Once in a while. But it passes. Look, I like the idea of them. And I sometimes miss those days. But I felt like I needed to get away from them if I ever wanted to, uh, grow up.”

Another jab.

“Is that why you’re here?” I asked. “You came to ask me to grow up too?”

“I’m not here to make you do anything you want to do,” she said. “I just…I missed you. I missed Clark. I missed hanging out with you.”

I thought I could read between the lines. “I can’t hang out with you now, because you’re not like me. You’re a diaper-dependent baby. You’re not the version of Clark I want to hang out with.”

“I miss you too,” I said.

“I don’t know what your plan is here, Clark. But there’s an opening at the company I work for. I think you’d be qualified for it, if you were interested. And if you still needed hours for your internship, maybe you could even…”

“I’m, uh, on a break from school,” I said.

My stomach grumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten anything since crawling out of the crib. I began a slow waddle across the room in the direction of the kitchen. Between the sagging diaper and my lack of confidence on my feet, it must’ve been quite a sight.

Ava followed me. “Don’t you want to work, Clark? Make some money?”

“I mean…eventually, sure.”

“How long are you going to stay here?” she asked. “How long are you going to crawl around and fill your diapers before you decide that it’s time to get back out there again?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I assume that the time will just feel right.”

“I really don’t want to sound like a nag,” she said. “And I definitely don’t want to tell you what to do with your life.”

“I know that.” I was pretty sure I knew that. My instinct was to be defensive, as if she was trying to ruin my blissfully padded life. But I knew that wasn’t the case. She just cared. She had concerns.

In the kitchen, I opened the fridge door to look at my options. On most days, Mommy was there to make these sorts of decisions for me. I rarely ever thought about choice when it came to food–I just consumed whatever she put in front of me. The baby bottle of milk caught my attention immediately–probably not an approved breakfast by itself, though Mommy wasn’t there to say as much.

It wasn’t until after I had closed the fridge door and popped the bottle’s nipple into my mouth that I realized how strange this must’ve looked to Ava.

She seemed amused, at least–her lips curled into a little smile again.

My cheeks were warming again as I sheepishly lowered the bottle. “This is weird, right? All of this?”

“I want to be clear, Clark–I don’t think I’m better than you because I decided to make some changes in my life. I believe you when you say you’re happy. I think, maybe, I’m here for…selfish reasons?”

“Selfish?”

She shrugged. “I just want my friend back.”

I didn’t think she meant ‘friend.’ She meant something else. Something bigger than friendship that we had been working on before everything had to go and change on us.

I wanted that too. But I also wanted what I had. I had sometimes daydreamed about the possibility that both things were possible. Now, though, I wasn’t sure that it was.

“I’m still here,” I said. Despite knowing damn well what she meant, I said it anyway. “I’m still your friend.”

“I know,” she said, sounding a little deflated. It wasn’t the answer she wanted.

There was a sudden churning in my gut–a familiar feeling, though one I had gotten pretty good at ignoring most days. I didn’t have to think about it, or what it’d inevitably lead to. Mommy–or someone under Mommy’s direction–would take care of that. Staring at Ava, though, I was more conscious of that ominous gurgle than I had been in quite some time.

There wasn’t much time to spare. Certainly not enough time to sprint to the bathroom–not that I would. All I could really do was warn her.

“I…I think I’m going to…”

Plorrrbbbbttt.

The back of my diaper expanded as much as it could as my mess near-effortlessly filled up all the vacant space that it could find. Another soft and thick load–as they tended to be these days. As loud as it would be stinky.

I was afraid to look up at Ava’s face immediately after. I wasn’t sure that I could handle it if she looked disappointed. Or grossed out. Or even just mildly annoyed.

“S-sorry,” I said.

To my surprise, she answered with: “It’s okay, Clark.” She sounded much more sympathetic than I expected her to.

“I-it happens so quickly anymore,” I shrugged. “I don’t really, uhm, think about it until it's too late.”

“I get it,” she said. I believed she meant that–maybe there was a point when she had experienced a feeling like that too.

I set the bottle down on the counter–that would have to wait.

“I should, uhm, probably change myself. This one’s hanging on for dear life.”

“No,” she said. “You can’t.”

“I mean, I kind of have to…”

“No,” she said again. “A baby can’t change his own diaper.”

“What are you saying? That you’re going to…” I couldn’t even get the words out of my mouth, the thought of being changed by her so overwhelmingly humiliating.

“Ms. Heller did hire me to be your babysitter after all,” she said. “Maybe I came because I wanted to see you again, but I didn’t actually think I’d make it through the whole weekend without changing one of your diapers.”

“B-but… Ava, it’s going to be, like, really gross. Y-you shouldn’t have to…”

“You let me worry about that,” she said. “Why don’t you show me to your nursery? Ms. Heller told me all about it, but I haven’t seen it for myself yet.”

“Yeah…okay.”

I took a few steps forward, feeling the load in the back of my mushy diaper squish and spread as I awkwardly waddled forward.

“If it’s easier,” she said, “why don’t you just crawl?”

I could hear a change in her tone–it was similar to the condescending tone she had used before, except now it sounded more purposeful. More accepting, perhaps.

She had come to me to see if I’d have been willing to ‘grow up’ with her. My response was to fill my diapers with a big disgusting load of poop. I’d have probably thrown in the towel if I was her too.

There seemed little point in being anything other than what I was: a baby. I dropped down to my hands and knees again, proceeding to crawl the rest of the way–my soiled diaper sagging and swaying from side to side beneath me as I plodded forward. I couldn’t see her, though I could hear her footsteps behind me–her shoes clip-clapping on the hardwood floors. I could only imagine her face, staring down at my bottom the whole way, equal parts disappointment and amusement on her face.

As soon as I crossed the threshold, I decided to just assume my usual position atop the big changing table. It was as much a habit as filling my diapers was at this point.

Ava seemed in no rush to get to the disaster in my diaper, though. She slowly made her way around the nursery, taking in everything. I wanted to know what was going through her mind. Did such a place still seem otherworldly to her? Did she wish that she had access to a room like this? Did it make her nostalgic for own pair of droopy diapers?

“She went all out, didn’t she?” Ava asked.

“She tends to do that for things she cares about,” I responded.

“Is it crazy that I’m a little jealous?”

I almost laughed. I knew it! I composed myself, offering: “Well, there’s plenty of diapers. If you want one for yourself. I don’t think Mommy would mind.”

“Surprisingly tempting,” she shrugged. “But I think I’m good. Why don’t we worry about you instead?”

“D-do you know how to change a diaper?”

She laughed. “Probably? I’ve had enough of my own changed. And I’ve watched your diapers get changed. And Bradley’s. I think I’ll be good.”

“Okay,” I said as she approached me. “But, uhm…I just want to be very clear: I’m sorry about how bad it is in there.”

She laughed. “Do babies usually apologize when they get their diapers changed?”

Nope. Maybe that was a more normal response for me many many diapers ago. But not anymore. I no longer had any anxiety or doubt about Mommy’s desire to change my diapers. I’d proudly wiggle atop the changing table, almost excited for Mommy to have to get her hands dirty as she cleaned up after me.

This was different. This wasn’t Mommy changing me. It wasn’t Lyndie. It wasn’t even Courtney–who was just a hired extension of Mommy’s own hands. This was someone I felt the need to apologize to for the state of my diaper. Hell, I felt like I needed to send her a ‘thank you’ card when this was all over.

I opened my legs, giving her access to the snaps at the bottom of the onesie. She reached between my thighs, the lightest of tugs opening the onesie up and letting my diaper flop out.

“So do you ever leave the house?” she asked.

“Not often. It’s kind of hard when I’m…uh…”

“Dependent on diapers?”

“Yeah. B-but…that’s okay. I like being here.”

“You don’t miss the outside world?” she asked, pulling up the onesie to fully expose the swampy diaper.

“Sometimes. I feel very disconnected from it.”

“You’re just a baby all the time?”

The answer felt a little complicated. In the beginning, Mommy had floated the idea of ‘immersion’ past me. As she saw it, I’d quickly acclimate to a new, infantile, life if I just immediately jumped into the deep end. I’d be treated like a baby 24/7 from the start. There’d be no breaks or pauses.

After a while, Mommy seemed willing to ease up on the immersion. We’d go out for an afternoon for some light shopping. Or she’d hand me my laptop and let me catch up on my emails and social media.

More and more, however, I found myself less interested in those opportunities. I didn’t need to stroll around a store. I didn’t care what my second-cousin Jack was posting about on Facebook. And I was more than happy to let Mommy take care of all the ‘adult’ parts of my life. Credit cards, taxes, bills–I handed over my lingering adult responsibilities to her and washed my hands of them.

She’d tell me that I could have whatever I wanted. If I wanted to go out, I could go out. If I wanted to binge watch Breaking Bad, I could binge it. If I wanted to stop pooping in diapers and start drinking from ‘big boy’ cups again, I’d only need to say the words.

So I was a baby all the time. By choice.

Actually, maybe it wasn’t that complicated of an answer: “Yeah.”

She laughed, shaking her head at me. “And that still appeals to you?”

“I…like it, yeah.”

She shrugged, seemingly able to accept this answer.

The diaper’s tapes were peeled back, and I watched with bated breath as she slowly opened the diaper. There it was–the nose twitch. The cringe. The look of someone who suddenly realized they were in over their heads.

“Oh wow,” she said, her eyes wide as she stared into the swampy abyss. “That’s…a mess.”

“Look, you don’t actually have to do this,” I said. “I can manage if you need to go get some fresh air.”

She laughed, loosening up her shoulders as she seemed to psych herself up again. “No, no. I can handle this. I may not like it, but I gave Ms. Heller my word that I’d take care of you.”

Out came the wipes. This was usually the part where a pacifier would be popped into my mouth, or I’d just start sucking my thumb unconsciously–leaving the adults to do their thing to my bottom. As tempting as it was to slide my thumb into my mouth, I kept my hands at my side while I watched her face as she tried to formulate a plan for cleaning me up.

“It’s not as bad as it could be,” she shrugged. “I imagine it’d be worse if you sat down in this.”

I nodded.

Her fingertip rammed itself into the tip of my chastity cage, sending a little jolt up my spine. “I see this is still here. Does it ever come off?”

“Not often,” I said. As it turned out, there were plenty of ways for me to climax without being unlocked. It was always a nice treat to see her sliding the key into the lock–but I just didn’t need the key.

“Some life you live, huh?” she laughed.

“It’s not all that bad.”

“Don’t you miss, like, sex?”

All I had to do was answer her question–and it was as simple as saying ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Instead, I answered her question with a question: “Are you having sex?”

I felt my cheeks growing hot after I blurted it out. It was rude of me to have asked–and it felt especially rude to have asked it in such an accusatory tone.

She sighed, her face getting a little red as well. “Well…I wasn’t planning on talking about it while I wiped up your dirty bottom. But, seeing as how we’re talking about it now…”

I was a fool. In the back of my mind, I had always imagined that Ava had been waiting for me. One day, I’d trade in my diapers for a pair of boxers, and I’d finish school. Get a job. Get an apartment of my own. And Ava would be there, ready to pick up where we left off. But how long had it been? How many months? And all that time, she thought I had just ‘vanished?’

“A-are you seeing someone?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Not really. Not…yet.”

“Oh.”

“I think that’s part of the reason I wanted to come see you.”

“To tell me that you’re having sex?”

She snort-laughed, shaking her head. “No, no. I just…I needed to see where you were at, Clark. I needed to see if you were anywhere close to being on the same page as me.”

“A-are you seeing someone?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. Well…not yet. But…” her voice trailed off, as she clearly had some hesitations about completing that thought.

“But what?”

She sighed. “N-nothing. You don’t want to hear about that.”

She was probably right. “I do!”

“I mean, there’s this guy I work with. We hang out from time to time. Flirt a little bit, but that’s all. I know he wants to ask me out on, like, a real date, but I’ve been kind of giving him the run-around whenever we get close to having that conversation. But, like, I want to get out there. I want to date. I want romance.”

“So…why aren’t you out there, then?”

But she had already told me the reason–it was the same reason she was here. She wanted to see if I was ready to ‘grow up’ yet.

Was I? I looked around the nursery, seeing the crib and all my diapers. Really, I didn’t have to look any further than beyond my open legs–where someone was wiping up my messy bottom for me. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever want to give this up.

She shrugged. “I…missed you, Clark.”

“I missed you too, Ava.”

“But you’re happy, right?”

“Of course.” But I immediately knew I had misunderstood her question. Obviously I was happy. But what she was really asking was if there was any chance I’d be moving on from this life soon.

I wished I could. For her, I wished I could. But I didn’t think I was ready yet.

The old diaper, and all of its foul contents, were rolled up and cast into the diaper bin. She unfurled a new diaper, flattening it out on the changing table between my legs before sliding it under my lifted bottom.

The last thing I wanted to do was ask her to wait for me. But I had to say something. What would a true friend say?

“You’re such an amazing person,” I said while she sprinkled baby powder into the fresh diaper. “You should be out there. You should be doing all the things you’re supposed to be doing in your early 20s. Making mistakes and breaking hearts.”

She laughed. “I’m not sure that’s the sales-pitch you think it is.”

“You know what I mean.”

She nodded. “You’re a sweet boy, Clark.”

There were a thousand things I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. I looked pathetic enough as it was–having a new diaper fastened around me. How selfish would I be if I asked her to wait a little longer? If I asked her to wait any amount of time?

“You’re sweet,” I said. “And I hope you meet people who see that too.”

A cloud seemed to hang over the house for some time after. We returned to the living room and tried to chat and catch up some more, but it just felt like small-talk. The energy had been sucked from the room, and neither of us seemed willing to acknowledge it. I finally decided to give us both a break by announcing that I needed to go take a nap for a bit.

I went to Mommy’s bedroom and curled up on her bed. It was comforting to smell traces of her perfume on the sheets. I wished she was here–if for no other reason so that she could tell me what to do and what to think.

Okay. But what did I want? Because it suddenly looked like I was choosing Mommy over Ava. And there was a part of me that thought: “Well, duh.”

But the big question that Ava had been asking was still a good one: When was enough enough? When would I…grow up?

Somewhere on the other side of Mommy’s bedroom door, Ava was sitting on a couch and watching the TV. Her phone was probably in her hand. Maybe she was texting with her mother. Or Lyndie. Or Mommy, even. Or, perhaps, she was texting that guy that she worked with. Setting up plans. Responding to his texts with emojis and ‘LOLs.’

That could’ve been me.

I spent the last few minutes of being awake, before taking a nice long nap, wondering what I’d need to do to be considered enough of an adult that Ava could take me seriously again. I wasn’t entirely sure that I was ready to move on yet–but I had a feeling I had been spinning my wheels for a little too long.

If anything was worth growing up for, it was Ava.